April 18, 2017

Planning

This weekend is the Girl Scout campout, and I am in charge of music. I'm playing for our Mass, but I'm also the person who's leading all the rest of the music.

Leading music for Girl Scout campers used to be my Thing. When I applied to college in the winter of 1987, the essay I used most often was one that talked about the experience of coaxing girls to sing until they discovered how much fun it could be.

Thirty years later I remember a lot of the songs we used to sing, but lots of them have faded too. And some of them don't hold up very well. I can still recite the words to On My Honor; I just don't want to.

So I'm trying to plan: I need a list of upbeat songs and a list of mellower songs. For upbeat songs it will be easiest to do call-and-response or highly repetitive songs, like Princess Pat and The Bear Song (the other day / I met a bear / a great big bear / away out there) and An Austrian Went Yodeling. Do girls still sing Sipping Cider? Accidental kissing leading to 49 children seems like a suboptimal message here in 2017. And I used to love the song Dem Bones (The Lord, he thought he'd make a man / took a little water and he took a little sand), but I am worried that the chorus sounds racist. That d/ð substitution is pretty specific to African-American English, is it not?

Some of the songs I loved most as a girl were songs with complicated lyrics, like Green Grow The Rushes, Ho. I'm not sure that one would fly at the campout, but it is SUCH a fun song.

I really don't know about the mellow songs. We used to sing Today, and I loved it, and we used to sing Girl Scouts Together, which I think is a dreadful song, and we used to sing On The Loose, which has a whole lot of lyrics. I am not excited about making song sheets.

I guess I am not sure how much patience the girls will have with unfamiliar songs, or whether they will be able to sing rounds, or how to balance repetition versus variety in a campout that will span less than 24 hours. It was different when camp lasted for a week. I'd love some input if you have thoughts to spare.

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In my former life I spent 20 years in the kids/family music business. I have many thoughts for you. I don't know how old the Girl Scouts in your group will be. 8? 11-12? 14? Or a mixture?

The first thing that comes to mind is This Land Is Your Land: classic, catchy, a chorus that's fun enough to sing over and over again but easy enough to pick up quickly if you've somehow not heard it before.

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt is fun, energetic, and good for inhibitory control when kids are a little overenthusiastic. You repeat the whole song about 5 times. The first time is entirely at a normal volume. On each subsequent time you sing the first ¾ of the song a little more quietly ("John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt/His is name is my name too/Whenever we go out, the people always shout/There goes") and the last line at top volume each time ("John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt/La la la la la la la"). By the time you get to the 4th repetition the quiet section is a whisper and on the last round you simply mouth it silently. The fun of everyone coming back in on the last line in loud and rowdy unison never gets old.

If the kids are a little older, Stand By Me and Lean On Me are both pretty easy to sing and learn but feel a little more sophisticated to sing, and both have lyrics that foster a sense of togetherness and unity especially when sung in the dark around a campfire toward the end of the night when everyone is getting a little sleepy.

I'm sorry to say I agree with you about Dem Bones. It's a really fun song but I don't know that I as a white lady would feel comfortable leading it in 2017. I love Green Grow the Rushes Ho and if the leader and maybe a couple of ringers know it really well I think you can get away with it because everyone can come in on the chorus even if they get lost in the complicated parts.

For inspiration I suggest perusing the song titles on the kids albums of Bill Harley, David Grover, The Neilds (who also have some grownup albums so make sure you're looking at the ones meant for kids), Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem and of course Pete (Seeger) and Woody (Guthrie).

Feel free to get in touch if you want more of my many many thoughts on getting young people to sing together :-)

Definitely yes to rounds, and maybe have quite a few songs ready so you can see what appeals -the funny ones, the melodic ones etc. I love Green grow the rushes o, too, and also On Ilkley moor bar tat. All the best!

What about "Make new friends, but keep the old?" (I can't remember the name of the song.) Also, we used to sing Skidamarinky-dinky-dink at Girl Scout camp, and also Swimming, Swimming in my Swimming Pool.

I spent many summers at Girl Scout camps, and wrote down the songs we sang in a little looseleaf binder. Found it recently and was shocked at how many of the songs are racist or sexist or misogynist or just plain questionable. We were all a lot less conscious back then.

My daughters' troopmates love An Austrian went Yodeling and The Quartermaster's Store.

Fried Ham. A Boom Chick-a-Boom. Everywhere We Go.

For slow songs, Moon on the Meadow, Silver Castle, Land of the Silver Birch, A Gypsy Rover (if you find "gypsy" problematic change it to "wand'ring" or something). I love One Day but that's a hard one to teach solo since the response is a different tune than the call.

Oh, and You Are My Sunshine is surprisingly satisfying to sing, especially if anyone can do a little easy harmony, and you can tell the girls that it was written by Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis, about his horse Sunshine.

A lot of my old favorites have already come up. I'll add the round we used to do: "one bottle pop two bottle pop.../don't throw your junk in my backyard my backyard my backyard.../fish and chips and vinegar...vinegar and pop!" We used to roar that one around the campfire; sometimes I sing it with/at my son. ;-)

I never knew this was a Donovan (?) song until decades later, but when I was a very wee sprout, at my very first sleep-away, we once did a round version of "happiness runs in a circular motion" (I think). My wee sprout self adored it.

We used to do "Hey, no, nobody home, no meat, no drink, nor money have I none; yet shall I be merry" as a round on bus rides.

John Denver and the Muppets once did a campfire round version of "O how lovely is the evening."

Oh good heavens, I just went to the scout songs site, and had a big FLASH of memory. Did anybody else march around Girl Scout campgrounds roaring,

"We are the Brownies!
Mighty mighty Brownies!
Everywhere we go-oh!
People want to know-oh
Whoooo we are,
sooooo we tell them:
WE ARE THE BROWNIES..."

It never really ended. We just sang it until we couldn't sing anymore, and dropped out one by one... Maybe that was the point: wear the troop out with all the marching around and singing, and we'll all sleep better at night!

How about the Noah's Ark song -- "Rise and shine and give God that glory, glory"? You can shorten it or lengthen it depending on whether you sing the chorus between each verse, or treat it as "through-composed." ;-)

(There's also the one about the unicorns and how they didn't make it onto the Ark, unlike "your green alligators, your long-necked geese, humpty-backed camels and your chimpanzees"...but I find it sad.)

For call and response, "The Green Grass Grew All Around" is fun, too. And one of my favorite calming songs (I think of it almost as a lullaby) is "This Pretty Planet," by Tom Chapin. It's easy to find on YouTube, and while it's meant to be a round, it also sounds pretty sung altogether.

Thank you! I had lots of years of Girl Scout camp, but now that I'm leading an American Heritage Girls troop so many years later, I'm finding that my repertoire is not quite big enough. I'm excited to go through this list of suggestions more thoroughly.